Monthly archive: April, 2013

Furthering my sometime theme on the representations of space in Mexico City, I want to continue my interest in the work of Paco Ignacio Taibo II (or PIT) and this time his novella De Paso (1986), published subsequently in English as Just Passing Throughwith Cinco Punto Press (2000). Readers may recall my earlier discussion of PIT’s preceding novel Sombra de la sombra (1986), or The Shadow of the Shadow. The subsequent novella Just Passing Through picks up the same theme of the earlier book by deciphering spaces of post-revolutionary Mexico in the 1920s. In this case it follows the exploits of Sebastián San Vicente (aka Pedro Sánchez or the Tampiqueño), a Spanish mechanic and boiler repairer, as well as anarcho-syndicalist, that arrives in Tampico in 1921.

Within the series Thesis Piecesfeatured on For the Desk Drawer, this is the eighth contribution thus far with this contribution authored by Carolina Cepeda, a visiting PhD researcher from the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia to the University of Nottingham. While researching under the supervision of myself and Andreas Bieler, Carolina has been increasingly drawn to analysing the alter-globalisation movement in Latin America. In this piece she assesses the implications across the region in light of the death of Hugo Chávez and the regional impact this may have on the “Bolivarian Revolution”, following the recent elections in Venezuela.

Hugo Chávez died on March 5th and now Venezuela has a new president: Nicolás Maduro. Chávez was Venezuela’s President for 14 years during which he transformed the country through social programmes, political and popular education, and the redistribution of wealth, mainly funded through oil revenue. However his performance in power generated huge debates among academics, politicians and civil society in general because his important accomplishments in social policy were accompanied with charges of authoritarian practice and the lack of transparency in some procedures.

Recently, myself and Andreas Bieler were jointly awarded the 2012-13 British International Studies Association (BISA)-Higher Education Academy (HEA) Award for Excellence in Teaching. One of the innovations we have introduced on our modules has been the idea of co-hosting a roundtable event revolving around the invitation of outside guest speakers to address the core content of the curriculum across several modules. Our aim is to expose students to different viewpoints and styles of delivery as well as to socialise them into the cut and thrust of intellectual debate. As a result, we recently co-hosted a roundtable on the theme of ‘Gramsci & Political Economy Today’ that attracted undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules on heterodox political economy as well postgraduate researchers. The invitees were Chris Hesketh (Oxford Brookes University) and Ian Bruff (Loughborough University) and the roundtable event itself was part of a “Gramsci Week”, succeeding the presentation by Peter Thomas (Brunel University) to the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) seminar series. What was at the heart of the presentations and the ensuing discussions?

This is the seventh contribution in the series Thesis Piecesfeatured on For the Desk Drawer with a slight twist. Regrettably Ryan Brading was never one of my doctoral students but he did complete his MA in Comparative Politics at the University of Nottingham. At a time when commentators have referred to a pseudo-religious aura around Hugo Chávez, it is crucial to question in more detail the politics of populism in Venezuela.

For many years, I have tried to figure out why two thirds of the population in an oil rich country live in poverty and make some sense of the political phenomenon Venezuela has experienced in the last twenty-five years. This Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez is commonly labelled populist. However, a convincing explanation of political populism has been difficult to locate and how this concept may refer to the Venezuelan case. As far as I am aware, there is nothing convincing in the literature contextualising what can be categorised as populist practices in Venezuela and describing the impact of this political phenomenon since Hugo Chávez led a coup d’état in February 1992.

In 2011, I was fortunate enough to be invited to present at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City to participate in a conference on the ‘Uses of Gramsci in Social and Political Theory’ (see ‘Gramsci y el concepto de revolución pasiva’). The proceedings of that event have now been published in an excellent volume entitled Horizontes Gramscianos: Estudios en torno al pensamiento de Antonio Gramsci (UNAM, 2013), edited by Massimo Modonesi. This book, Gramscian Horizons: studies around the thought of Antonio Gramsci, is an important text in furthering the wave of work on Gramsci published in Spanish in and on Latin America, following key works by figures such as Dora Kanoussi, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Marcos del Roio, José Arico, Juan Carlos Portantiero, Hugues Portelli, and Ronaldo Munck. The book itself carries significant essays inter alia by Fabio Frosini, Guido Liguori, Dora Kannousi, and Carlos Nelson Coutinho.